How to get ants for an ant farm? Daniel (NE Arkansas)

Thanks for writing such an awesome website! Would you please help me.
I have several panes of glass and instructions on how to build an ant
farm. That's not the problem. The problem is where do I get ants from?
I live in Northeast Arkansas and I do see ants outside, mainly little
black ones. A day ago I saw larger red ones going through my garden
collecting every insect they could find. Today they were nowhere to be
found. Do I always need to start with one queen? Do I just dig one up.
Hope you can help me. My son is very impatient :) He wants his ant
farm. Well, I am just as eager to get this going too.

Thanks for your time,
Daniel

Hi Daniel,

Thank you very much for contacting us! It is a very common question how to get ants for an ant farm and we have several posts on the topic. Check out this link:

If you want some ants quickly, I suggest just collecting a bunch of workers from one colony. They will die within a couple of weeks, but your son will have something to look at in the meantime and it will be interesting to observe them for a while. After most or all the workers have died, remove the remaining once and add new once. Without a picture, it is always hard to tell which ant species you might have encountered. However, largish red ants in NE Arkansas are probably a Formica species. They do not sting, but are very fast-running and a bit difficult to catch. Right now it's so hot and dry in that part of the country that all the ants have gone pretty deep under ground. Still, early in the morning, one might be able to find some near the surface, in their mounds (Formica builds mounts), or under cover objects such as rocks, logs and boards. It will be easier after we finally get some rain, though!